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Superstorm Sandy evacuees Monique LaPoint, 20, and her boyfriend John Burkard, 32, both of Seaside Heights, with their dog Thor, a 12-year-old golden retriever, are staying at the Ocean Plaza Hotel in Ocean Grove because it's pet friendly. / MARY FRANK/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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OCEAN GROVE — At the Ocean Plaza, a 19-room bed-and-breakfast, Christmas music flowed through the hallways and up the stairs, the tree was bright with lights and the kitchen stirred with holiday chefs, but Monique LaPoint was mostly wiping her eyes on Christmas morning.

Hope Ishmael kept reminding herself that she must follow the lessons she passes to her two boys, Jalen and Kevin, that “can’t” isn’t allowed to be used and to stay positive.

’Tis the season of adjustment.

LaPoint, 20, and Ishmael, 31, are on the day-to-day plan superstorm Sandy thrust upon them, and Christmas has been especially tough. They no longer have homes. Their traditions have been interrupted. Their optimism is draining.

But they share something else they each regard as little miracles that adds a somewhat biblical twist to their shared holiday away from home: they are expecting children in 2013.

This would be the bright spot in an otherwise dark holiday season that started on Oct. 29 when Sandy forced them from their homes.

“That’s one of the best things that came out of this,” LaPoint said. “It’s a blessing.”

Like so many of the displaced, LaPoint and Ishmael’s families have bounced from shelter to shelter and hotel to hotel.

Their paths recently crossed at the Ocean Plaza, a gingerbread Victorian just steps from the beach. There are fewer locations warm and cozy enough to spend a holiday. Home is one of them.

Ishmael’s apartment, on the west side of Red Bank, was flooded and heavily damaged. She and her sons share a room at the inn while the landlord works on repairs at the apartment. Ishmael, eight months pregnant, was told she may be able to return Jan. 5, but doctors predict she will be in the maternity ward by then.

On Christmas morning she traditionally visits with the boys at their grandmother’s house in Red Bank, then goes home and stays there, cooking and relaxing.

Today, she brought the boys to Red Bank and came back to the inn to cook.

The owners opened up the laundry room and the kitchen to provide some familiarity and ease the burdens of the guests.

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A communal feast was planned with guests of the plaza but also neighboring bed and breakfasts, assistant manager Sasha Nairanovsky said.

“We’re a small community, so we help each other in Ocean Grove,” he said. “That way it doesn’t place too much of a burden on anybody at one time.”

When guests started arriving in mid-November, they were eating cans of soup.

On Christmas Eve, Palmer spent all day cooking ham, turkey, a pineapple souffle and stuffing. The owners, Marshall and Elliott Koplitz, were commanding the kitchen duties on Christmas Day, Palmer said, with some help here and there.

“They definitely make it like home here,” Ishmael said. “But there’s nothing like your own kitchen and your own home.”

LaPoint, who is 15 weeks pregnant, normally visits her family in Vermont for Christmas. Her phone rang at 5:30 Christmas morning. Her 11-year-old sister called, she said, to explain that all the presents were under the tree.

LaPoint, lying in bed with her boyfriend, John Burkard, and their golden retriever, Thor, said she wouldn’t make it, not for a couple of weeks at least.

“It’s hard. I’ve been crying,” she said. “All I’ve been doing is crying because I’m not with family.”

But she was with family, just a new one. LaPoint is 15 weeks pregnant. If the baby is a boy, they will name him John Jerome. If it is a girl, they are unsure what she will be named. She is certain it will not be Sandy or Irene.

Ishmael said she is having a boy.

She’s naming him Story or Stori — the spelling is yet to be determined.

Until then, they have each other, mostly because they have to.

“It’s a nice place here,” LaPoint said. “It’s like a little family here.”